Seagate in January announced an updated lineup of its popular Backup Plus hard drives, debuting the Backup Plus Slim and the Backup Plus Portable, both of which are now available for purchase and are ideal for those who need lots of storage space at an affordable price.
The Backup Plus Slim and the Backup Plus Portable are your average, run of the mill hard drives. The Backup Plus Slim is the thinner of the two models as it has less storage space, measuring in at 4.5 inches by 3 inches with a thickness of just about half an inch.
The Backup Plus Portable is about the same size but it's close to an inch thick and about twice as heavy (eight ounces vs. four). Neither one of these drives takes up much space, so they're ideal for backup or other purposes and can be tucked away in a drawer afterwards.
Design wise, the two hard drives are made from a black plastic material with a brushed aluminum front plate. The test models I have are in silver, but these also come in black, a light blue color, and red.
The Backup Plus Slim offers 1TB or 2TB of storage, and the Backup Plus Portable is available with either 4TB or 5TB of storage space. Both are formatted to work with either Mac or Windows.
These hard drives are using standard USB-A cables to plug into a computer, which means that you're going to need a USB-A to USB-C adapter if you want to use them with one of Apple's modern Macs.
USB-C hard drives aren't much more expensive than these Seagate Backup hard drives, so it's maybe not even worth picking one of these up if you have a USB-C machine unless you're swapping files between computers and continue to have a Mac or Windows machine that uses USB-A. For older machines that still have USB-A ports, these hard drives will work well, and functionally, they're fine with an adapter on a USB-C machine.
There's nothing special about the transfer speeds of the Backup Plus Slim and Backup Plus Portable. Seagate says they can reach transfer speeds of 120MB/s, and in my tests on a 2016 MacBook Pro with USB-C, I even saw transfer speeds a little bit higher at about 130MB/s.![Plus Plus](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134153674/460575899.jpeg)
Backup Plus Portable on left, Backup Plus Slim on right
You're not going to want to use standard hard drives in situations where you need fast file transfer capabilities, but for things like backups where you have hours to let a backup take place, these drives work well.
Both hard drives come equipped with links to register them on Seagate's website, as well as options to download Seagate's Toolkit software for automatically syncing files between mirrored folders on the drive and on your Mac. You can use these with Windows and Mac machines right out of the box without the need to reformat.
Backup Plus Slim
Seagate sells these hard drives with a one-year Create plan for Mylio, photo organizing software that lets you upload photos to the cloud and access them on multiple devices, but after that year, it costs $50/year to use.
Backup Plus Portable
There's also free two month access to Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography plan, which costs $9.99/month to use after the trial period. Both Mylio and Creative Cloud are optional, so you don't need to sign up for them if you're not interested in those services.
If you've made the swap over to USB-C and only have USB-C machines, Seagate's Backup Plus Portable and Backup Plus Slim probably aren't the best option for you, because you'll need a dongle.
If you still use USB-A machines or a mix of USB-C and USB-A, however, these hard drives are an affordable way to get a lot of storage for things like Time Machine backups, offloading photos, and more.
Seagate's Backup Plus Slim is available from Amazon, with 1TB of storage priced at $55 and 2TB of storage priced at $70. The Backup Plus Portable is also available from Amazon with 4TB of storage priced at $110 and 5TB of storage priced at $125.
Note: Seagate provided MacRumors with a Backup Plus Portable and Backup Plus Slim for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
Seagate has long sold a line of Backup Plus external hard drives that offer large amounts of storage space at a reasonable price, and in June, the company announced two new features added to all. How to use Seagate hard drive for both Mac and Windows. Ask Question Asked 9 years, 6 months ago. Active 1 year, 4 months ago. Viewed 85k times 7. I recently bought a Seagate for Mac 1 TB external hard drive. When I connect to my MacBook through the FireWire, it works fine, but I also have media on my Dell laptop which is running Windows. May 22, 2017 Meet the stylish external laptop drive for Mac computers. Backup Plus Slim for Mac makes it easy to store and access 2TB of content on the go, and yes—it works with Windows computers too! Featuring a minimalist metal enclosure, this portable external hard drive is fast and easy to use.
The Backup Plus Slim and the Backup Plus Portable are your average, run of the mill hard drives. The Backup Plus Slim is the thinner of the two models as it has less storage space, measuring in at 4.5 inches by 3 inches with a thickness of just about half an inch.
The Backup Plus Portable is about the same size but it's close to an inch thick and about twice as heavy (eight ounces vs. four). Neither one of these drives takes up much space, so they're ideal for backup or other purposes and can be tucked away in a drawer afterwards.
Design wise, the two hard drives are made from a black plastic material with a brushed aluminum front plate. The test models I have are in silver, but these also come in black, a light blue color, and red.
The Backup Plus Slim offers 1TB or 2TB of storage, and the Backup Plus Portable is available with either 4TB or 5TB of storage space. Both are formatted to work with either Mac or Windows.
These hard drives are using standard USB-A cables to plug into a computer, which means that you're going to need a USB-A to USB-C adapter if you want to use them with one of Apple's modern Macs.
USB-C hard drives aren't much more expensive than these Seagate Backup hard drives, so it's maybe not even worth picking one of these up if you have a USB-C machine unless you're swapping files between computers and continue to have a Mac or Windows machine that uses USB-A. For older machines that still have USB-A ports, these hard drives will work well, and functionally, they're fine with an adapter on a USB-C machine.
There's nothing special about the transfer speeds of the Backup Plus Slim and Backup Plus Portable. Seagate says they can reach transfer speeds of 120MB/s, and in my tests on a 2016 MacBook Pro with USB-C, I even saw transfer speeds a little bit higher at about 130MB/s.
![Plus Plus](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134153674/460575899.jpeg)
You're not going to want to use standard hard drives in situations where you need fast file transfer capabilities, but for things like backups where you have hours to let a backup take place, these drives work well.
Both hard drives come equipped with links to register them on Seagate's website, as well as options to download Seagate's Toolkit software for automatically syncing files between mirrored folders on the drive and on your Mac. You can use these with Windows and Mac machines right out of the box without the need to reformat.
Seagate sells these hard drives with a one-year Create plan for Mylio, photo organizing software that lets you upload photos to the cloud and access them on multiple devices, but after that year, it costs $50/year to use.
There's also free two month access to Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography plan, which costs $9.99/month to use after the trial period. Both Mylio and Creative Cloud are optional, so you don't need to sign up for them if you're not interested in those services.
Bottom Line
If you've made the swap over to USB-C and only have USB-C machines, Seagate's Backup Plus Portable and Backup Plus Slim probably aren't the best option for you, because you'll need a dongle.
If you still use USB-A machines or a mix of USB-C and USB-A, however, these hard drives are an affordable way to get a lot of storage for things like Time Machine backups, offloading photos, and more.
How to Buy
Seagate's Backup Plus Slim is available from Amazon, with 1TB of storage priced at $55 and 2TB of storage priced at $70. The Backup Plus Portable is also available from Amazon with 4TB of storage priced at $110 and 5TB of storage priced at $125.
Note: Seagate provided MacRumors with a Backup Plus Portable and Backup Plus Slim for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
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In Apple support communities a number of Mac OS X users have reported that their Mac machine won’t show up Seagate Backup Plus drive. There are various reasons for this. This article gives you a brief idea about the reasons behind this problem along with the solutions.
Seagate backup plus not appearing on Mac…...
Why Seagate Backup Plus for Mac Not Recognized?
Seagate Backup Plus Slim For Mac
Below are the causes for Mac not recognizing Seagate backup plus.
- Problem with USB ports
- Recent OS update issue
- System failure
- Virus infection
- Motherboard issue
- External drive damage or corruption etc.
So it is suggested to check whether the power cables are connected properly or not. If so then uninterrupted power supply may not transmit power. Try by connecting the Seagate drive to all ports of Mac machine if not working then connect it to some other system and check whether it works.
If it is working well then recover your important files, documents, audios, videos, photos from Mac external hard drive. And, try the troubleshooting techniques explained in the Part 2 section of this page.
In case, your Seagate Backup Plus drive is not detected in other systems then immediately recover data from Seagate Backup Plus drive that is not detected on Mac using Remo Recover; because chances are there that you may lose data while fixing undetected Seagate backup plus drive. So, it is suggested to backup your data from Seagate backup plus drive before you start resolving the issue.
And, is this regard Remo Recover can help you. It will easily recover even your pictures from an external hard drive on Mac machines that is not showing up. This software can recover data from all Mac OS X including High Sierra, macOS Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, etc.
Part 1: Recover Data from Seagate Backup Plus Drive That Is Not Detected on Mac with Remo Recover Mac
Get the free download of Remo Recover (Mac) software on your Macintosh and install it. Next, follow the below step-by-step instructions to recover data from Seagate backup plus drive that is not recognized on Mac OS X.
Mac OS X 10.5 - Leopard
Mac OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard
Mac OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard
Steps to recover data from unrecognized Seagate backup plus drive on Mac with Remo Recover:
1. Connect your Seagate backup plus drive to the software installed Mac, launch Remo Recover (Mac) tool and click the Recover Volumes/Drives button on the main screen.
2.Next, click on the Volumes Recovery button to recover data from Seagate backup plus drive volumes.
3. Select the connected Seagate backup plus drive, followed by all its volumes and click “Next”.
4. If you wish you can specify file types to recover from the Seagate plus drive. Else, hit the Skip button to select all file formats by default.
5. The data recovery software deep scans the selected Seagate backup plus drive and lists all recovered files.
6. Preview recovered data and Save your required files on the Mac machine’s internal hard drive (HDD).
Note: Don’t save recovered files onto the same Seagate backup plus drive from where it is retrieved.
Now, you have your data safely recovered from the Seagate backup plus drive. So, you can start fixing Seagate backup plus drive that is not detected on Mac.
Part 2: Fix Seagate Backup Plus Drive that is Not Detected On Mac
Step 1:
- OpenDisk Utility and check if the external hard drive is faded or grayed out and uncountable?
- If so then connect another external drive or pen drive. This drive also grayed out and not recognized then do a proper eject from Finder Windows list
- Then restart the computer and connect the external drive again
Step 2:
- On Mac, go to Disk Utility and choose the external drive from the left sidebar. Then click on verify disc. This will help you to find and correct the minor errors
Step 3:
- Go to Mac’s Finder Menu and select Go to Finder
- Then type Seagate drive path which appears under Disk Utility and checks whether it will display your drive.
Step 4:
- Start Mac
- Go to Settings
- Select Finder Preferences
- Then under the General tab select the external hard drive in Show these items on the desktop
- Now reinsert the drive and check
Step 5:
- Open Mac
- Go to Applications then toUtilities
- Click on Disk Utilities
- From that change the format of Seagate external drive that is compatible with your Mac OS
Step 6:
If any of the above methods didn’t help you to solve the problem, then install the fresh OS X and try. Or else connect Seagate drive to any Windows computer, delete the partition and connect back to Mac Pro.
Seagate Backup Plus Slim For Mac Not Recognized
I hope your issue is resolved by using the above techniques. In case, if you have tried any other technique and successfully fixed the Seagate backup plus drive that is not recognized on Mac then you can Leave a Reply and share your solution here.